The Stupidity of Popular Science

In many ways, I feel sorry for the family who now has to undergo this. They loved their boy, and wanted him cured. So they took him to some ex-Soviet era scientists to try what may politely be called a "controversial" treatment. The use of fetal stem cells.

With predictably bad results. Poor kid.

I say "predictably" bad, because there are things about fetal stem cells which make them obviously bad medicine and bad science. This is altogether independent of the moral dimension of using the flesh of a baby that has been killed as a life-extender for someone else. That aspect reminds me of certain horrendous Irish fairy tales.

But from the SCIENTIFIC merits alone, fetal stem cells have always been an unpromising waste of money. There is the two-fold issue involved with them that is an apparently unsolvable paradox. On the one hand, the cells are foreign tissue, and a recipient's immune system must be suppressed if the cells are not to be attacked and destroyed by the recipient's body. This is a situation that often results in the recipient's death. On the other hand, the cells are capable of turning into any tissue... including cancerous ones or else just benign tumors. And there is precious little that keeps them from doing so. Except for the patient's immune system, which would have suppresed the tumors... if it hadn't been suppressed so that the cells wouldn't be rejected in the first place.

The more one suppresses the immune system, the greater the probability of tumor growth. The more one fights against tumors, the greater the chance that the immune system will reject the tumors.

Ultimately, if you ran a drug company and had any other drug that caused tumor growth or tissue rejection in two thirds of all who take it and no effect in one third, you would throw that drug in the trash and never look at it again. I often wonder why that doesn't happen with fetal stem cell technology, especially since ADULT stem cell technology avoids the twin problem rather handily.